Abandoned Groups, or groups whose owner has gone inactive, have been an issue within the Groups community for some time. While it may seem as though this is a simple issue to address, it’s actually fairly complicated. There are several factors involved that make it difficult for us to re-assign ownership responsibilities without the original owner’s consent.
In order address this on-going issue, we are going to create a new Guideline regarding owner responsibilities to lay the groundwork for transferring the ownership of a group where the group owner is not fulfilling his/her responsibilities. For example, this Guideline might inform group owners that they are responsible for monitoring group activity to make sure the group remains true to its purpose and that pending messages and members are processed in a timely fashion.
Our general philosophy at Yahoo! Groups is that group owners are free to run their groups in any way they want, as long as their actions do not violate the Yahoo! Terms of Service . However, we never intended this to mean that a group owner could essentially abandon a group, without first making sure that someone was in place to take over. And we have heard from many users on the Groups Suggestion board who have urged us to help them when a group owner stops being an engaged owner. When members have invested significant amounts of time and effort into a group, we understand they feel it isn’t fair for their group to be ruined because the owner disappears. We agree.
At the same time, we need to make sure any system for transferring ownership of a group is not abused by those who might try to “steal” a group and does not punish group owners who are simply taking a short vacation (as opposed to those who are truly absentee).
So while we’re still working out the details and the timelines, we are considering implementing a process along the lines of the following:
- Group owners who do not take any action in their group for an extended period of time may receive a notification that they are risk of having another member promoted to co-owner status.
- The owner will then have some period of time to respond to this notification. If the owner responds, then nothing will change in their group.
- But if the group owner fails to respond within a specified time frame, then another group member will be promoted to co-owner status. If the group has moderators, the new owner(s) likely will come from that list. If there are no moderators, then the new owner will be automatically selected from the Group membership based on some combination of seniority and participation. Alternatively, we are also considering giving group owners the ability to name someone as their predecessor should their activity/moderation be inactive for the specified time frame (similar to a living trust).
As we work to define the best terms for this Guideline, we’d like to hear your thoughts on the process we’ve proposed above.
- What should the specified time frame be that a group owner is absent before someone else within the group be promoted?
- Should Yahoo! promote a moderator that exists within the group or should the current owner have to name someone who will take over in the event they go inactive when they start the group?
- What other criteria should we use for deciding who becomes the group owner in a situation where there is no active moderator or “trustee”?
- What should happen if the original group owner does reappear, months, or even years later?
- What other concerns or suggestions do you have that we haven’t addressed here? Please share with us by commenting below.
Thanks for your help to shape this important new Guideline!
Yahoo! Groups Team
As far as anyone is able to discern, Yahoo has no intention whatsoever of doing anything. (I am not saying that this is their actual policy, merely that there is no *discernible* evidence that they have plans to change the guidelines).
Yes, it is a difficult problem, and it may not be possible to come up with a 100% solution. But several of the fixes proposed in this blog would solve *most* of the hiiacking problems without increasing the risk that a rogue member take over a group against the moderator’s wishes.
Yahoo has not implemented any of these suggestions. Nor have they told us specifically why they are a bad idea (which would allow us to refine them).
Perhaps I’m mistaken about this, and Yahoo has been discussing the problem in weekly meetings for the last 17 months. I would be delighted to be proven wrong.
Hi, i know it has been a while about the discussion regarding missing owners but what is the status of the guideline here.
I am moderator of several RPG groups and the owner is awol, we need to make some serious changes so I was wondering if there was already a decision made regarding changing ownerships.
Can some one let me know asap.
thanks
Some time back, I asked Yahoo to make me owner of an abandoned group and they said they could make me a moderator after trying to contact the original owner. So now I have been the only moderator for over a year and the original owner still has not shown up. I got a reply the other day essentially saying that the original group owner has inviolable rights to the group and they can’t promote me to owner. They did however, give me more privileges so that I can appoint other moderators. In essence, I can do everything except delete the group I think. They said the Terms of Service do not allow them to remove a group owner.
My point is that it is silly to say their TOS does not allow this. All the need to do is to modify the TOS. So the question comes down to Why… why won’t Yahoo change their TOS to allow them to replace a group owner if they are MIA for weeks/months/years? As others have said, what is the point of letting a group remain with no one to run it??? That does not seem to be in Yahoo’s best interest.
Rick
PS Yahoo also made me moderator of another group that was not worth trying to salvage. Since I couldn’t delete the group, I turned off everyone’s rights to post and deleted all prior content. So now Yahoo has a shell of a group they are saving for someone who doesn’t care. That’s what happens when storage space and bandwidth become nearly free!
I know this lady who has 2 groups that she owns, maybe more. I just recently found out from her brother after several months of trying to contact her that she has passed away. Her groups do not know she has passed & their are no moderators for her groups. I would like to either take over the groups or to at least let the members know that this lady has passed away. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Now, as for the limit I would say 1 month. Also, if someone says someone has died I would think you could find other ways to accept the persons word. Sheesh what a hassle. I have contacted the ladies brother and have asked him to contact Yahoo. Hopefully he can get in touch with them by phone which I think you should have a phone number listed in case of this happening. The # I gave him that I could find was the Privacy Policy #. Hopefully they’ll be able to direct him to the right area.
I do have the ladies Yahoo ID but she changed her password before she died. I also know the email address she used. But her brother has already cancelled her email account. So getting the password reset is now impossible. Family members don’t deal with these groups unless they have their own & know what to do. So he has been asking for my help in this area. Most people on these groups are here to have friends & sometimes that is all they have to communicate with.
What should the specified time frame be that a group owner is absent before someone else within the group be promoted? 1 month
Should Yahoo! promote a moderator that exists within the group or should the current owner have to name someone who will take over in the event they go inactive when they start the group? Promote one & send an email to the person that they have become owner or if you have heard from someone who is interested in taking over the group. Would be kind of hard to ask a dead person if this be the case.
What should happen if the original group owner does reappear, months, or even years later? Leave it up to the current owner on whether to relinquish the ownership.
What other concerns or suggestions do you have that we haven’t addressed here? Please share with us by commenting below.
Allow for an alternate contact if no response has been received from owner. The alternate contact would need to know the owners Yahoo ID & contact email address.
I don’t get it. I am looking for a way to take over an abandoned (orphan) group. I see this has been kicking around for a long time and nothing has come of it. Has Yahoo taken any action?
I think 3 months of no activity, no emails, no contact, email bouncing should immediately triiger the “new owner” procedure. Why have an additional waiting period when the owner has not been there in 7 years (one group I am in).
Naturally, notify group members about what is happening. Perhaps they can nominate someone(s) for ‘owner’ status.
Please.. PLEASE do not delete moribund groups. I belong to mostly technical groups. Our files and archives are our TREASURE!! If we start a new group to replace the old we try to bring over as much as we can.
GeoB
How long is this going to take to sort out ? The original blog from Yahoo Groups was Oct 21 2008 . Thats 14 months ago !
I belong to a group where the Owner / Moderator has very sadly died and the group is unusable due to unsavoury spam that we cant delete or block
Come on Yahoo.. Pull your socks up and get this problem sorted out
The owner died and no one is moderating. 87 listed members, but a couple are spammers. The group can be seasonally active. The co-owner concept would be useful with a final adoption after 30 days.
There is also the issue of simply disbanding the group. Sometimes groups are created for a one-time event, such as a wedding (let’s say), or an annual event like “2008 Fundraiser” and once it’s over, nobody ever thinks to delete the group. I would imagine that Yahoo would prefer not to be cluttered up with hundreds of “dead groups” that will never be used again.
Tying this in to the original topic, there should be some kind of flag to YAHOO when a group goes unused for X amount of time (let’s say two years?) at which point Yahoo should send a notification to the Owner and/or Moderators to ask if the group/Owner is still active. If no response, just delete the group. Likely, the ones from the group who WERE active have moved to a different group anyway (such as in the case of an annual fundraiser where everyone who’s still active is now in the new group and don’t even realize they’re still listed in the old group).
Since Yahoo seems to continually be having issues of storage space, it would seem that they’d WANT a way to delete groups that have had no traffic in years.
1. What should the specified time frame be that a group owner is absent before someone else within the group be promoted?
a. 90 days, although I’d prefer it be a shorter period of time.
2. Should Yahoo! promote a moderator that exists within the group or should the current owner have to name someone who will take over in the event they go inactive when they start the group?
a. Yes, an ACTIVE moderator should be promoted to OWNER -> with FULL privileges/control over the group, i.e. deleting the group, if necessary. Also, set up the ‘living trust’ so group ownership can revert to an active member/moderator is something happens to the group owner/owner log-in.
3. What other criteria should we use for deciding who becomes the group owner in a situation where there is no active moderator or “trustee?”
a. Seniority AND -> participation seem sufficient criterion for promoting a group member to OWNER if there is no active moderator.
4. What should happen if the original group owner does reappear, months, or even years later?
a. If the owner’s e-mail address never bounced to begin with, and the owner was simply not responding (thereby, finally, loosing his/her group after a reasonable period of inactivity, as determined by Yahoo!), then “tough luck!” That ‘owner’ can just be a regular member of the group.
5. What other concerns or suggestions do you have that we haven’t addressed here?
a. Make it possible for group members to report an ‘abandoned’ group to Yahoo! Groups, thereby initiating the promotion-to-owner process for an existing moderator or engaged, participating member.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to leave input on the issue of abandoned-by-owner Yahoo! groups.
Steve is right. It’s been over a year, and groups with absent moderators are dying, or spammed out.
Yes, it’s true, there are some scenarios that are difficult to resolve. But when the owner has been inactive for a year *and* owner email bounces, it’s clear that there is no moderator in charge. So damn it, come up with a procedure for replacing those moderators — and anything you come up with will be better than the current situation.
And then if you want to think about the “difficult” situations for another year, go ahead; at least most of the dead groups will be up and running again with new moderators.
I agree with Art. What is with Yahoo on this issue? In general your groups work well and seem to be one of the clearest competitive advantages over google, yet you systematically let them atrophy or get taken over by porn spam?
Although it’s true that some cases are complex, others are not. Why not begin by accepting requests for new ownership in groups where there is no owner activity for a year or more and owner emails bounce?
This blog is pointless. I just spent a large chunk of my evening reading over a year of futility and frustration.
Users are asked for their input. It is given ad nauseum.
I see that “major policy changes” are being noted as the reason for the long delay (or even a posting of consideration). There is much more emphasis on changing Yahoo to copy more popular social networking sites without running into any of these issues. Hogwash.
Next time you folks don’t want input – don’t ask for it.
I’m sure you’ve got the spammer hits to cover the loss of legitimate group use so please don’t fret about losing a legitimate user-base.
Today, November 12, 2009 that I’m posting here. The last comment before mine is: ” Whitney said,October 21, 2008 @ 4:10 pm ” PLEASE what is the latest on this status regarding Moderators who are inactive. I need help running a group of 26K plus members. Ms. Melissa Daniels, are you incharge of this particular issue? What is the latest. . . pleaseeeee! Or have you yahoo group management completely abandoned us loyal moderators who continue to manage our groups by ourselves? PLEASE RESPOND if we cannot post or appeal for help on yahoo group: Moderator Central. THANK YOU!!!
This group started 10 years ago.
It is very active and performing great service.
I was a hard working Moderator several years ago and then passed on the duty to others.
It now seems as if the person who was owner has at some time removed owner privileges from others and now vanished.
Surely Yahoo can upgrade the existing active Moderator to Owner so that she can at least create new Moderators?
The existing Owner can have an opportunity to contact Yahoo if he is not happy but otherwise a whole lot of archive information is likely to be lost.
I think Yahoo need in fairness to get this sorted, after all this group has given their advertisers much exposure over a number of years and presumably generated income for Yahoo and so is commercially worth Servicing.
After more than a year of comments, I don’t see any response to indicate a policy change or procedure. What gives?
Our eGroup Owner has died and I’m a Moderator with limited priveleges.
HELP!!
I am getting the feeling this is a lost cause am I right? some of the problems most of you point out is the same for me but some of the suggestions for fixing them would not help in my case of pet rescue groups, not that I hold out any hope that Yahoo is listening or will di anything. If they made it so you had to have a poll that would not work on rescue groups because though some of our problems are spam most is from cross posters (who think they are helping) clogging up the lists with 1000′s of emails so though many don’t read at all some may and not vote for a change and if they went by who post the most well then the cross poster who clogs the most will be first choice! NO help there at all. I find that on many groups polls are not available and many times members names aren’t either so there is no way to tell if an owner’s email is bouncing or not and if there are any mod’s so where do you go from there? I’ve been told to start a new group and the problem is that when people search the best name helps and the amount of members come up on top even if all the members are bouncing it still looks like they are the most active group to join and they would have to scroll down several pages to find a new group. Some of the groups have been set to allow some peoples post and not others without moderation or all are moderated and the moterators as well as the owner are MIA so you can’t even send a message to the group to see if anyone wants to move to another list or not so I am begining to feel that yahoo groups are dead.
AS has been said before these groups have helped alot of people and animals with still way too much potential to help more but not if something doesn’t change soon to let some new people revive the dead groups.
What if an owner has told you they no longer have any interest in the group, but won’t delete it or turn it over to anyone else. I’m on a group and I’m the only one who has posted in like months; So why can’t there be a way to take over something you know for a fact has been given up on by it’s creator.